One million signatures against food waste in Europe

Ⓒ AFP/Archivos – Damien Meyer – | Meat packed in a supermarket in the town of Saint-Gregoire, near Rennes, on January 30 in northwestern France

A European petition in favor of the fight against food waste had collected more than a million signatures on Saturday morning, according to the website change.org.

The text calls for it to be mandatory for supermarkets in all EU member states to donate unsold food to charitable associations that claim it instead of throwing it away or destroying it, as has already happened in France since a law was passed in this regard. two years ago.

The petition was launched simultaneously in seven countries: Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom.

The European Citizen Initiatives, in force since 2012, and the European Treaty of Lisbon allow political proposals to a group of at least one million EU citizens from at least a quarter of the 28 member countries.

At the moment, the petition has only symbolic character, since it was not registered on the European Union website. However, its main promoter, the French councilor Arash Derambarsh, delivered it when it had 890,000 signatures to the European Commissioner in charge of food security, Vytenis Andriukaitis.

With a million signatures, its promoters now hope to convince French President Emmanuel Macron to present a draft directive aimed at extending the French law to the entire EU.

“In 2018, I trust that this text will be taken by France to the table of the European Council” to force all the European food distribution to participate in the efforts against waste, Derambarsh told AFP.

“In the Elysee they told me: ‘let’s do it in 2018,'” he said.

In two years in France, the law allowed a 22% increase in the number of meals distributed by associations to people in need, according to Geneviève Wills, president of the French antenna of the World Food Program, a UN agency that deals with food security.